🚀 go-pugleaf

We are discussing, from positions of relative ignorance, extremely
complex questions that have no real answers.  But let's do it anyway!

On 13 Oct 1998 22:53:21 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge@wegge.dk>
wrote:

>darrow@oneillaw.com (O'Neill) writes:
>
>> On 12 Oct 1998 08:46:27 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge@wegge.dk>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> >darrow@oneillaw.com (M O'Neill) writes:
>> >
>> >> On 11 Oct 1998 11:40:11 -0600, moore.louis@childrens.tchden.org
>> >> (Louis B. Moore) wrote:
>> >
>> > ...
>> >> Hey fella, I agree with your comments as well.  Be careful with your
>> >> attributions.  Don't you think it's possible for a free society to
>> >> meet its humanitarian obligations?  What country takes better care
>> >> of its poor than the US?  China?  Iraq?  N. Korea (ha haha,starving
>> >> its people in order to build nuclear weapons)?
>> >
>> > Just about every european country, with the *possible* exception of
>> >Albania.
>> >
>> 
>> I received a similar comment via email.  I think it's debatable, but
>> it doesn't really matter.  The point is that it's generally the
>> "capitalistic" countries that provide the best relief for their poor
>> and the like.
>
> In fact, it does matter. I think that the facts prove that totalt
>absence of capitalism is not significantly worse that total
>capitalism. There is a golden average somewhere inbetween those
>extremes. 
> 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, though I have an idea.  I
guess I'm unsure about what the golden average is supposed to mean.
I've heard of the golden mean, which if I haven't forgotten everything
I learned in classics, is a point at about 35 to 40 percent.  But it
was a literary term and I don't think it was intended to set economic
policy.

>> My understand is that the european countries provide a lot of services
>> that aren't means tested, i.e., health, education, etc.  I don't know
>
> "Means tested"? Could you please elaborate a bit on that. The phrase
>doesn't mean any more to me than "ankestyrelse" does to you.
>

"Means tested" means that the one's entitlement to the benefit depends
on one's economic circumstances.  For examply, health care is provided
by the state to persons who meet certain poverty criteria.  it is not
universally provided, as I understand it is in all or most European
Countries.

>> whether payments to the poor (i.e., welfare benefits) as such are more
>> generous than those provided in the US, which benefits of course vary
>> from state to state.
>
> That depends on how you define poor. I have effectively gotten my CS
>education, while receiving unemployment compensation. Does that make
>me poor? 
> 

Well this is a difficult subject indeed.  In the U.S., unemployment
benefits are not to alleviate poverty but to provide payments to
workers who are temporarily unemployed for reasons beyond their
control.  It is not means tested, therefore the mere fact that one is
receiving unemployment tells nothing about the economic circumstances
of that person, only that he is not presently working.

I think when we talk about poverty, we really need to look at whether
a person's basic needs are provided for.  Food, clothing, shelter, and
medical care.

There is also a big difference between the urban poor and the rural
poor.  This makes comparing the lot of a poor peasant in Bulgaria with
someone living in an urban ghetto in the U.S. virtually impossible.

No one starves in the United States.  This I can say for sure.  Most
of the other necessities are delivered to the poor as well, in varying
quantities and with varying degrees of success.  Benefits to the poor
are not centralized, they depend on the governments of 50 different
states and within the states many cities have programs as well.  Some
programs are funded by the federal government.  This patchwork
approach makes generalizations very difficult to make.

I have known a great many people who are on welfare.  Most of them
live what we could consider middle class lifestyles, perhaps lower
middle class, but middle class nonetheless.  Almost none would
consider themselves poor.

>> Albania is abysmally poor, and I doubt it has any real safety net for
>> its citizens.  I wonder about other countries in the Balkans as well.
>> Serbia doesn't seem to be doing much for its ethnic Albanians at the
>> present apart from trying to kill them.  Maybe they aren't poor, I
>> don't know.
>
> That's still a question of definition. 

please offer some definitions then.

>I suppose that some Albanians
>are rich compared to the rest of the country, even if they aren't by
>western standards. 
>

this is always the case.

>> I think I would rather be poor in the U.S. than in most European
>> countries.  Perhaps the situation is better in some of the more
>
> I wouldn't. Sure, I'm biased, but I still haven't seen people
>living in the streets around here, even though I live in the seconds 
>largest city of the country.
>

I gather by your email you're in Germany.

In my experience, Europeans have a particular fascination with the
phenomenon of homelessness here in the U.S.  They see it as
disgraceful and a badge of shame for what is supposedly the richest
country on earth.  

The truth is that the homeless are almost without exception mentally
ill.  They are on the streets because it is constitutionally unlawful
to commit them to mental institutions against their will unless they
pose some threat of violence to themselves or others.  These court
decisions were made about 20 years ago, and as a result many
institutions literally opened their doors, and people who would
otherwise be institutionalized are free to fend for themselves.

I live in New York City, and here we have many shelters for the
homeless.  But no one can force the homeless to stay in them against
their will.  This is not a problem of poverty.  It is not a problem of
jobs.  There are no jobs for the homeless, they are unemployable.

>> prosperous countries, but I understand that situation is changing as
>> these countries deal with increasing ethnic minorities.
>
> Not really. 
>

Hmmm, I wonder.  What about all the incidents of violence toward Turks
and the like that I have read about.  What is the situation there?

>> >> We hardly know what poverty is in this country.  I'm not a right
>> >> winger, I'm not a republican or anything close to it.  I have real
>> >> problems with the accumulation of excess wealth, but those are moral
>> >> problems.  I haven't seen any political system which can deal with
>> >> those problems.  THey can only be dealt with by an educated public.
>> >> You can't save people from themselves.  Educate them, and they might
>> >> be able to make the right decisions though.
>> >
>> > Unfortunately not. If that were the case, then the Soviet Union would
>> >have fared much, much better. The public is what the public is, and is
>> >impossible to change.
>> 
>> The Soviet Union might have fared better if it did not attempt to
>> impose an artificial economic system and had granted its citizens a
>> few basic civil liberties.  
>
> No. The Soviet Union started out in a transitional phase, where the
>workers and the peasants supposedly were to receive proper political
>education. However, far to soon the basic greed took over.

No doubt, but the country was totally bankrupt as well.